Open Access

Andreas Christ, Markus Feißt

• Mobile learning increases both flexibility and self-determined learning, often combined with a high degree of context awareness. Flexibility and context awareness includes time and location, as well as the actual individual situation. To achieve such goals, mobile learning is not just a stand-alone and independent learning environment, but is instead embedded in a broader e-learning environment.Mobile learning increases both flexibility and self-determined learning, often combined with a high degree of context awareness. Flexibility and context awareness includes time and location, as well as the actual individual situation. To achieve such goals, mobile learning is not just a stand-alone and independent learning environment, but is instead embedded in a broader e-learning environment. This is true for the didactic and the pedagogic concepts and the learning (content) management system, as well as the overall software architecture. XML has been proven to be adequate and a powerful technology to store content in a presentation independent manner. By defining an additional attribute inside the XML tags, it is possible to classify the content. At the same time, this will help the author generate learning material for different devices in an efficient and structured way. Also, the content can be used in different formats (XHTML, PDF, etc.) as well as with different technologies (browser, applet, MIDlet, Ajax, etc.). In order to optimise the content presentation on different mobile devices, the content has to be adapted. A necessary precondition for the adaptation process is the identification of the connected device. The classification of the identified mobile device simplifies the mapping between device capabilities and content. The ICAT (Identification, Classification, Adaptation and Tagged XML) framework addresses these issues. The proposed design patterns will help authors to generated content for such a system.…